Spirit
by Chibi's Sister
Summary: Halloween fic. Kaiba never believed in ghosts. But this Halloween night, someone might change his mind. Oneshot.


Author's Note: This might be kind of rough, since I didn't get a chance to fine-tune it as much as I would have liked. Hopefully, it's still enjoyable, though.

Disclaimer: Me no own; you no sue. Got it?

Spirit:

Halloween. The most senseless, irrational holiday I could think if. Imagine, devoting an entire day to ghosts, witches, vampires, ghouls, and assorted spooky nonsense. Crap, all of it. There was nothing but the present, the solid material world we all lived in. The supernatural was nothing but a hodgepodge of superstition and old wives tales. People scaring themselves for the fun of it. Fun, hah.

I couldn't imagine why I'd let Mokuba go out tonight. Maybe I was impressed and little flattered by the Blue Eyes White Dragon costume he'd put together. Maybe it was because this was the last year he would be young enough to go trick-or-treating and I wanted him to enjoy the childhood that I had never gotten to experience. Maybe the puppy eyes got to me.

He'd been gone less than an hour and I was already regretting the decision. I shouldn't encourage him to get into that kind of nonsense. He already hung out with Yugi and the geek squad too much as it was, and who knows what kind of hocus-pocus crap they were filling his head with? I had to make sure he got a firm grasp on the here and now. I had to make sure he could separate reality from rumor. I had to….It occurred to me that perhaps I simple miss his company.

I sat at my computer, alone in the empty mansion. All my employees had taken the night off for the holiday, even Roland. There wasn't any point in staying at headquarters, so I had set up here, to make some use of this wasted night. But I couldn't concentrate on the screen in front of me. I just stared at it blankly, getting nothing done.

"Seto." A soft voice echoed in the air. I jumped, just slightly. Had Mokuba returned early? I turned in the direction of the voice.

All the lights were still off, except for the lone desk lamp I was working by. It seemed strange Mokuba wouldn't have turned the hall light on. I narrowed my eyes suspiciously and waited to hear the voice again.

I didn't have to wait long. A moment later, I heard it. "Seto." It repeated. The voice was low, just loud enough for me to hear it clearly. It was impossible to determine much else about it, whether it was male or female, old or young. It had soft quality about it that seemed to make adult male unlikely, but I couldn't be sure. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. I rose silently from my chair and crept towards it, picking up a metal rod from my filing cabinets, just in case.

As I walked stealthily down the staircase, the voice got louder. "Seto," it said again. "Where are you?" The voice was definitely not Mokuba's. My face hardened. I didn't know what game this intruder was playing, but he (or she) was going to regret messing with Seto Kaiba.

The further I went, the more I deduced. The voice was female, and it was coming from my private study. The door was shut. I carefully positioned myself on the side. Simply because there was only one voice was no reason to assume there was only one intruder. I readied myself. _One, two…Three!_

I kicked the door open and burst inside, holding the bar ready to knock the intruder's head off. There was a soft gasp of surprise. Then, "Seto, you finally came."

Slowly, I lowered the rod. The intruder was a young woman. She was tall, with unusually pale skin and flowing white hair. She sat calmly in the leather swivel chair in front of my desk. I could see my dueling deck spread out in front of her.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" I demanded.

Her vivid blue eyes widened. "Seto, don't you know me? Don't you recognize me?"

"I've never seen you before in my life."

"I see." Her eyes dimmed and looked down a little. Was it my imagination or was that the beginnings of a tear on her lashes?

Whether it was or not, I didn't really care. "Do you mind explaining what you are doing here?"

"I came to see you," she said simply, meeting my gaze for the first time since I'd entered the room. I wasn't prepared for their haunting look. A strange emotion swept through me. Pity? Regret? Even…recognition? But that was impossible. Whoever this girl was, what I'd said before was true. She was a complete stranger to me.

"This was my only chance, you see," she continued quietly. "Things that would otherwise be impossible are not so tonight."

"What kind of things?" I had a suspicion she was referring to the kind of things Yugi and his friends kept trying to convince me of, the kind of things science dictated simply could not exist. Another thought struck me before she could answer. "How did you get in here? The doors were locked." Not only had the entrances to the mansion, but the door to the study been carefully locked. I kept the only study key in my pocket. I glanced at the now-broken door. Still locked. A slight shiver ran down my spine.

"To both of your questions, Seto." She rose from the chair and walked, almost gilded, to the wall. She reached out and touched it. Then, she seemed to melt right through it. My breath caught. She was gone.

A second later, she reemerged, through a different point in the wall. She brushed a strand of snowy white out of her face and looked at me. "Does that answer your questions?"

"You're not real," I burst out. It was some kind of trick, it had to be. State of the art holographics would do it.

She smiled sadly. "You're right, I'm not."

"Don't patronize me."

"I'm not. This," she gestured towards her body," isn't real. It's merely a projection…" I _knew_ it was a projection of some kind. "…of my spirit."

"Of your spirit," I repeated skeptically.

She nodded. "To put it simply, I'm a ghost." She held up her hand to forestall my comment. "And, yes, I know you don't believe in ghosts. That doesn't change what I am, though." She sighed. "I shouldn't have come. I just…I just wanted…"

"Wanted what?" Despite her ridiculous claims, I was still curious to hear what she was going to say.

She took a deep breath. "I wanted to tell you that I love you. That I'm watching over you, Seto. And that I'll always be there." She looked down again, her hair almost completely obscuring her face.

My mind whirled. This had to the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me, and there was tough competition. Was someone trying to make a fool out of me? I glared icily at the girl. "I think you should go."

She nodded. "Yes, I should." Her body seemed to glimmer a bit, and was becoming transparent, I realized. Hah. Second-rate holo-technology.

She noticed my gaze and smiled wistfully. "I can't maintain the projection properly for much longer. I have to return to my true form."

"What's your true form?" I wasn't buying this nonsense, but it didn't hurt to ask.

She touched my face gently. I felt a cold, tingling sensation. What kind of hologram was this? Then she stepped back and picked up one of the cards from my deck. She looked at me again and smiled. "This." She held up the Blue Eyes White Dragon card. There was a blaze of blinding white light, through which I thought I heard her voice say "I believe in you, Seto." Then the light died, and I was able to open my eyes again. She was gone.

It was dark, oppressively dark. I suddenly realized there were no light on down here. But, there had been light before…

I bent down and picked up the Blue Eyes Card, which had fallen to the ground. It still shone faintly. A sense of loss pervaded me. A word sprung to my lips, a name deeply familiar. I'd never heard it before in my life, but that didn't matter. _Things that would otherwise be impossible are not so tonight. _

"Kisara."


End file.
